DREAM Adaptive Recreation is the recent recipient of a $50,000 Flathead Electric Cooperative Community Education Grant to support the creation of a permanent, accessible educational space for DREAM’s future location at Whitefish Mountain Resort.  

DREAM’s mission is to enhance the quality of life of individuals with physical, cognitive, or sensory disabilities by providing year-round outdoor adaptive recreation opportunities, such as skiing, biking, kayaking, and more. The organization works with disabled persons ages five and up, including active-duty service members and veterans with a disability from any area. Programming is free for active-duty service members and veterans.  

Julie Tickle, Executive Director of DREAM, presented the Community Education Grant request to the Co-op’s trustees.  

“Simply put, the demand for DREAM’s services in our communities is more than we can provide with our current physical setup,” Tickle said. “The Lesar family and Whitefish Mountain Resort have stepped up with huge financial and in-kind donations that will allow us to build an adaptive recreation facility to meet the community’s needs. This will be called the Lesar Family Mountain Center for DREAM Adaptive Recreation. We hope to open our new doors in the spring of 2027.”  

As a not-for-profit, member-owned co-op, Flathead Electric’s business model means that when it brings in more revenue than is needed to operate, that money is allocated back to its members as “capital credits.” Each year, some of these capital credits go unclaimed, usually because members move away without updating their mailing addresses. When capital credits go unclaimed for five years or more, Montana law allows the money to be used for educational purposes, such as funding the Co-op’s occasional Community Education Grant awards.  

“We learned about DREAM’s need for educational components within the Lesar Family Mountain Center, including the outfitting of spaces dedicated to training, teaching, and collaboration,” said Stacey Schnebel, president of the Co-op’s board of trustees. “It became clear that Flathead Electric could serve a new segment of our community by reinvesting some unclaimed capital credit dollars into the new adaptive recreation center. This reinvestment represents less than 1% of the total project cost, but we intend for its impact to be felt for generations.”  

Learn more about DREAM Adaptive Recreation, and the continuing Lesar Family Mountain Center for DREAM Adaptive Recreation at Whitefish Mountain Resort capital campaign, at www.dreamadaptive.org  

Learn more about Flathead Electric Cooperative’s capital credits at www.flatheadelectric.com/about-my-co-op/what-are-capital-credits/